The $8.2 million in payments to Politico is for an annual subscription to its “Politico Pro” feature, which says it provides everything from “in-depth analysis” and news stories to congressional bill tracking and “customized” alerts and notifications.
A marketing pitch for the subscription service states, “Whether you’re a United States lobbyist, consultant, researcher, or analyst, POLITICO Pro can help you stay informed and craft winning policy.”
The federal agencies that paid the most for Politico Pro are the Department of Health and Human Services, which paid $1.37 million, followed by $1.37 million in subscriptions from the Department of the Interior, according to a Fox News story.
Joseph Vazquez, a business editor at Media Research Center, tells AFN the payments to Politico remind him of Pravda. That is the famous communist propaganda newspaper in the former Soviet Union that pretended to be a neutral news source behind the Iron Curtain.
“If you have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on subscriptions to a news agency,” Vazquez argues, “that's not just a subscription. That's patronage.”
That accusation mirrors what others have concluded, too: The federal government's payments influenced Politico's news coverage that was already biased in favor of Democrats and liberal causes.
DOGE uncovered USAID payment
The payments were uncovered by Elon Musk and his researchers at the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. The savvy researchers, led by Musk, are reviewing thousands of federal agencies, and trillions of dollars in spending, to identify and eliminate government waste for the new Trump administration.
The news this week the federal government paid millions of dollars to Politico can be traced back to DOGE and its scrutiny of USAID. That rogue federal agency, whose future is now in doubt after squandering millions of dollars overseas, paid approximately $44,000 for a Politico Pro subscription, too.
The irony of USAID’s payment for Politico Pro is that it amounts to pennies compared to other federal agencies, including $1.29 million from the Department of Energy and $552,000 from the Department of Agriculture.
At the White House, press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced Wednesday the Trump administration is closing the government spigot to Politico.
Leavitt told White House reporters, including at least one from Politico, she could confirm “that the more than $8 million taxpayer dollars that have gone to, essentially, subsidizing subscriptions to Politico on the American taxpayers’ dime, will no longer be happening.”
Worried and frustrated Politico staffers also reported this week their employer failed to deposit their biweekly paychecks. The missed deposit date was blamed on a “technical error” that was eventually fixed.
As far as the future of Politico, Vasquez says it deserves the same treatment as Pravda. "That is would forever be labeled as government propaganda," he says.
